The 2013 American-Made Index

Cars.com's American-Made Index rates vehicles built and bought in the U.S. Factors include where the car's parts come from, whether the car is assembled in the U.S. and sales. We disqualify models with a domestic parts content rating below 75 percent, models built exclusively outside the U.S. or models soon to be discontinued without a U.S.-built successor.

Strong sales and 75 percent domestic-parts content propelled Ford's popular F-150 pickup to the top of the AMI for 2013, a rank it held from 2006 to 2008. The Toyota Camry, which held the top spot from 2009 through 2012, fell to No. 2. The Dodge Avenger, assembled in suburban Detroit, makes its AMI debut; so does the Kentucky-built Toyota Avalon. The Honda Odyssey — a former AMI contender absent in 2012 — returned at No. 4. GM's three-row crossovers reprised last year's appearance, as did Toyota's Tundra pickup and Sienna minivan. The Tundra has been an AMI regular since 2007; the Sienna has made every AMI since Cars.com's inaugural study in 2006.

All told, Detroit automakers had five of the AMI's 10 models; Toyota and Honda had the other five. Nissan and Hyundai-Kia did not rank despite U.S. assembly plants in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee. That's because domestic-parts content, as mandated by the American Automobile Labeling Act, is still comparatively low on their U.S.-built models.

Editor's Note

In today's global economy, there's no easy way to determine just how American a car is. Many cars built in the U.S., for example, are assembled using parts that come from elsewhere. Some cars assembled in the U.S. from largely American-made parts don't sell well, meaning fewer Americans are employed to build them. Cars.com's American-Made Index recognizes cars that are built here, have a high percentage of domestic parts and are bought in large numbers by American consumers.

Domestic-parts content stems from Congress' 1992 American Automobile Labeling Act, which groups the U.S. and Canada under the same "domestic" umbrella. It's one of the bill's imperfections, but the AALA is the only domestic-parts labeling system car shoppers can find on every new car sold in America. Other domestic-content ratings — namely, those used for the North American Free Trade Agreement and the corporate average fuel economy programs — are unpublished, give a simple over/under indication or lump even more countries, like Mexico, into the "domestic" pool.